used
adjEtymology From Middle English used, equivalent to use + -ed.
1
That is or has or have been used.
- The ground was littered with used syringes left behind by drug abusers.
- Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
2
That has or have previously been owned by someone else.
- He bought a used car.
3
In used to.
- Derived terms
- getting used to, get used, ill-used, oft-used, old time used to be, postally used, used bookstore, usedness, used-to-be, used up
- Related terms
- abused, ill-used, misused, screen-used, used up